Thanks ladies! I really think that these excursions are a little more our style.

As much as Fran wants to get scuba certified, try a zipline, and all those other things. I think we need to take baby steps first. Getting a gym membership (since Bally's went out of business) would be the first step. Actually GOING to the gym would be the second step!

I swore I had replied but apparently the Internet ate it! I think your new excursion choices will be much less stressful.

Jill in CO

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I hate when that happens!

I know what you mean. On our Mexican Riviera Cruise we only left the ship in Puerto Vallarta and we just went shopping and hired a taxi to take us on a sightseeing tour of the town. At that time tendering wasn't even an option. I think these will be enjoyable and like you said, much less stressful.

OK,
Today was a MAJOR learning curve day for me! First off, do online check-in day 60 from your trip! I was stupid and waited, and now our boarding time is 1:30 to 2:00PM. Are they even serving lunch any more at that time?

I'm gonna have to run straight to the Palo desk and beg that they still have brunch reservations for Thursday left! My only saving grace is that like every other person on this cruise seems to have kids, because of the kids sail free thing!

Then I found out via our FB group that there are two airports in Houston, and our Disney Ground Transportation was dropping us off and the WRONG airport! I started calculating the price of a taxi and it was like $75 to get to our hotel and 30 miles away!

I was able to ring up Disney and luckily they offered transportation back to our airport. So we got switched over. Now we only have to load the Disney bus and once they drop us off, we call the Doubletree and they come and pick us up.

I'm already tired with all the mistakes I've made. We leave a week from tomorrow. I just started really actually packing and making up lists of my clothes. Luckily I bought my Formal and Semi Formal Dresses back in December as well as the dress for my first Brunch at Palo. Now I just need to figure out the rest.

I did the same thing wating too long to check in!! Booked after the pay in full date and just kinda 'forgot' about excursions and checking in and by the time I did had 1:30 port time too..ugh. All Palo was already booked except brunch the first full day so I booked it, but then saw from previous cruisers on the 8 day that the first full day night was formal night, so canceled it. On our Wonder cruise we arrived at Palo in t shirts and jeans and apologized to all who would listen. We had the John Lassiter presentation that was scheduled to be 45 minutes which would give us time to change, but it went almost 2 hours (loved every minute!) and by the time we made it...late...to Palo almost missed the brunch serving time and felt awful being so poorly dressed..but it was fun all the same. Soon you will be comfy on board and all these dramas leading up to it will be forgotten

I'm sure Corinna will be here to chime in, but I'm almost certain that they start open boarding well before that, so if you're at the port you'll most likely be able to board much earlier than your 'official' boarding time.

I don't know how typical out cruise was. We were on the 11:30 shuttle from the hotel, which was also running about 15 minutes late so we got to the port shortly after noon. When we got to the terminal, there was nobody waiting at all. We got directed straight to a check in desk. Once we were checked in, we were told that we could get straight on the ship. We were on the ship by 12:20 and that was after stopping for an embarkation photo.

I did the same thing wating too long to check in!! Booked after the pay in full date and just kinda 'forgot' about excursions and checking in and by the time I did had 1:30 port time too..ugh. All Palo was already booked except brunch the first full day so I booked it, but then saw from previous cruisers on the 8 day that the first full day night was formal night, so canceled it. On our Wonder cruise we arrived at Palo in t shirts and jeans and apologized to all who would listen. We had the John Lassiter presentation that was scheduled to be 45 minutes which would give us time to change, but it went almost 2 hours (loved every minute!) and by the time we made it...late...to Palo almost missed the brunch serving time and felt awful being so poorly dressed..but it was fun all the same. Soon you will be comfy on board and all these dramas leading up to it will be forgotten

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Well, I'm going to hope that some of the spots they reserve for on board booking are still left when I get on the cruise. On our Mexican Riviera we booked our second Palo brunch when we finished our first with no problem.

I'm sure Corinna will be here to chime in, but I'm almost certain that they start open boarding well before that, so if you're at the port you'll most likely be able to board much earlier than your 'official' boarding time.

I don't know how typical out cruise was. We were on the 11:30 shuttle from the hotel, which was also running about 15 minutes late so we got to the port shortly after noon. When we got to the terminal, there was nobody waiting at all. We got directed straight to a check in desk. Once we were checked in, we were told that we could get straight on the ship. We were on the ship by 12:20 and that was after stopping for an embarkation photo.

Corinna

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What time was your boarding scheduled for? I think I'll try to get there earlier than our scheduled time anyways. All they can do is make us wait and we'd be doing that at the hotel.